The ladies, after gracious expressions concerning
the pleasure of their stroll, descended the steps
at the north end of High Walk, where the parapet stops,
and turned inland from the water through a little street.
I watched them until they went out of my sight round
a corner; but the two silent, leisurely figures, moving
in their black and their veils along an empty highway,
come back to me often in the pictures of my thoughts;
come back most often, indeed, as the human part of
what my memory sees when it turns to look at Kings
Port. For, first, it sees the blue frame of quiet
sunny water, and the white town within its frame beneath
the clear, untainted air; and then it sees the high-slanted
roofs, red with their old corrugated tiles, and the
tops of leafy enclosures dipping below sight among
quaint and huddled quadrangles; and, next, the quiet
houses standing in their separate grounds, their narrow
ends to the street and their long, two-storied galleries
open to the south, but their hushed windows closed
as if against the prying, restless Present that must
not look in and disturb the motionless memories which
sit brooding behind these shutters; and between all
these silent mansions lie the narrow streets, the
quiet, empty streets, along which, as my memory watches
them, pass the two ladies silently, in their black
and their veils, moving between high, mellow-colored
garden walls over whose tops look the oleanders, the
climbing roses, and all the taller flowers of the
gardens.

And if Mrs. Gregory and Mrs. Weguelin seemed to me
at moments as narrow as those streets, they also seemed
to me as lovely as those serene gardens; and if I
had smiled at their prejudices, I had loved their
innocence, their deep innocence, of the poisoned age
which has succeeded their own; and if I had wondered
this day at their powers for cruelty, I wondered the
next day at the glimpse I had of their kindness.
For during a pelting cold rainstorm, as I sat and
shivered in a Royal Street car, waiting for it to
start upon its north-bound course, the house-door
opposite which we stood at the end of the track opened,
and Mrs. Weguelin’s head appeared, nodding to
the conductor as she sent her black servant out with
hot coffee for him! He took off his hat, and smiled,
and thanked her; and when we had started and I, the
sole passenger in the chilly car, asked him about
this, he said with native pride: “The ladies
always watches out for us conductors in stormy weather,
sir. That’s Mistress Weguelin St. Michael,
one of our finest.” And then he gave me
careful directions how to find a shop that I was seeking.

Think of this happening in New York! Think of
the aristocracy of that metropolis warming up with
coffee the—­but why think of it, or of a
New York conductor answering your questions with careful
directions! It is not New York’s fault,
it is merely New York’s misfortune: New
York is in a hurry; and a world of haste cannot be
a world either of courtesy or of kindness. But
we have progress, progress, instead; and that is a
tremendous consolation.